EL SALVADOR: Coming under strain
A very close eye needs to be kept on events in El Salvador over the coming days and weeks. The region was guilty of switching off when an institutional crisis unfolded in Honduras in early 2009, culminating in an unexpected coup in June of that year. Some of the same stresses and strains are being felt in neighbouring El Salvador right now. It would be a mistake to push the point too far – no two cases are entirely alike and there are important differences –, but there are several clear parallels with Honduras.
Just as in Honduras the institutional crisis in El Salvador is, at heart, a power struggle. The country’s traditional political parties are running scared that a fledgling, reform-minded, constitutional chamber of the supreme court is muscling in on their patch, with a number of electoral reforms. In early June President Mauricio Funes signed a decree rushed through congress, curtailing the chamber’s powers by requiring it to issue unanimous rulings, which are unobtainable because one of the five magistrates is partisan. Funes has since sought to keep on the sidelines of the struggle as polls suggest the public is firmly behind the magistrates.
In a bid to recover popular support, the left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (FMLN) is talking openly about reforming El Salvador’s constitution, including the seven so-called “untouchable” articles. It was the supposition by the Honduran reactionary economic and political elite that president Manuel Zelaya intended to reform similar articles (known as normas pétreas) in the Honduran constitution, above all the bar on re-election (which is the same in El Salvador), that lay behind the coup. These articles were approved by a constituent assembly and enshrined in the 1983 constitution drawn up under a right-wing government heavily influenced by the military. The problem is that the constitution does not establish any mechanism for forming a constituent assembly, which would be the only means of reforming these articles.
The spokesman for the FMLN, Roberto Lorenzana, also the vice-president of the legislative assembly, said “we don’t think much of the normas pétreas, times change… and nothing is set in stone.” Funes has not lent his backing to the proposed constitutional reform, and will probably be deterred by both the legal complexities and the fiercely critical response of the right-wing parties in congress, not to mention the Honduran precedent. But, the standoff with the constitutional chamber of the supreme court remains: it is issuing rulings because it claims the decree requiring unanimous votes was unconstitutional, while the head of the official gazette, controlled by the executive, is refusing to publish them.
Meanwhile, the president of congress, Sigfrido Reyes, a member of the FMLN party leadership, has proposed creating a constitutional court, which would be separate from, and indeed, more powerful than the supreme court. This proposal could be much more appealing to the right-wing parties in congress. In essence, however, it would constitute an autogolpe. The clear intention is to emasculate the constitutional chamber of the supreme court, and set up a more partisan court controlled by the legislative assembly.
The Salvadoran foundation for economic and social development (Fusades) warned that “these developments present a grave challenge to El Salvador’s democracy, unprecedented since the Peace Accords of 1992. Civil society is behind the “Fantastic Four” (magistrates) but it is not clear that the political class is willing to accept an independent judiciary that will limit its power.”